


the judge

by ollie_oxen_free



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Animal Abuse, Animal Death, Apathy, Execution, Mention of Death, Not Beta Read, So here we are, Treason, Underfell, a look into just how the judge works in underfell, amiright?, its underfell, mention of murder, possibly to be continued?, some bullshit i made up and thought was neat, what the fuck are ya gonna do, who the fuck knows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-11
Updated: 2018-01-11
Packaged: 2019-03-03 10:52:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13339737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ollie_oxen_free/pseuds/ollie_oxen_free
Summary: and the executioner





	the judge

**Author's Note:**

> [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHwRWAZC0fg)

The crowd was thrumming with excitement. Children and adults alike were chattering away, smiles and sneers playing on their teeth. There was a sense of community that didn’t otherwise exist during these times, times when breath seemed to come easier and trust wasn’t as jealously held.

They were all sick fucks, was the reason.

He was included in it though, standing at the center of it all, both the judge and the executioner, and mercy wasn’t something that was given. Ever.

A hush suddenly swept over the crowd, rising like a wave and crashing just as heavy. Though the excitement was fierce, the people stepped back as the monsters were taken out, led down the line. No one wanted to be associated with the accused.

Accused was a vague term. Innocent until proven guilty was a joke, and everyone knew this, had heard it enough that it was repeated with mocking. There was no innocent in the Underground. There never was.

The struggle always started just in front of him, the monster being forced to their knees in front of him, two guards holding them down despite their thrashing. 

And then came the words. 

Sans would lift his head slightly, a cruel smile picking at his mouth, hollow and genuine at the same time because as much as he wished to hate it was sometimes satisfying, sometimes  _ needed. _ He would Check them, read their stats aloud, and then he would Judge them for the accused crime.

It was simple, set in stone and laid out step by step. He would speak, and the crowds would jeer, would mock, adults and children calling out for dust even as the first syllable had barely been uttered. Children, not yet past the youth that the violence had stolen from them time and time again, tattered striped shirts appearing and disappearing constantly between the legs of the adults.

They were trying to get a better view, trying to see and shouting with the adults even as they were shoved violently back. Not all of them were itching to see dust scattered, though, some were slipping through the bodies and grabbing what they could steal. Sans knew, because he had been one of them once. Were the children who picked pockets colder than those that ached to be at the front? Braver, perhaps.

There was often excitement at the scene of executions, the light that filtered through the stained glass windows bathing over the golden hall in a mocking display of color. Too cheery, too bright.

This execution was different, though, something new and violent was stirring in the mix, frothing over the rim and spilling out over the floor. He could feel the weight of the stares on him- twice as many, this time, two times the monsters coming out of every crack to shove as close in as they could- as the doors at the end of the hall creaked open.

And then the cheer started. Bloodthirsty, crashing against every wall and rebounding back in cacophony, drowning everything else out. He could feel it, every voice in the hall embedding itself in the marrow of his bones, weighing him down and filling him with a rage, one that wasn’t taken up by his soul but was still  _ there, _ heavy and inescapable. There was no escape from it.

His brother hadn’t always been strong. Weak, once, as children were, bones thin and fragile and so extremely pitiful that even the more generous of monsters wouldn’t give them a scrap of food. Why give food to a child that was to die anyways? The stronger children that roamed the streets like predators would take it anyways. They were more suited to the world, with LV already to their name and compassion low.

Papyrus had been compassionate, weak, and Sans was certain that, had he not been there, his brother would have been trampled to dust beneath the uncaring feet of those who lived in the capitol. They had survived, made it out, made it through terrible things because of terrible things. Papyrus had joined the royal guard. He’d made it through the deadly and impossible training. He’d come to Snowdin, had come close to fixing the town, a beacon of safety in the sea of dust around it.

Dust and snow were similar colors. They’d had their work cut out for them.

Papyrus was good. Not kind, not near enough to that, but good, good beyond anyone in the fucked up world deserved. Too good for Snowdin, too good for the Underground. Too good for the King.

“Treason,” he said. A whisper rose up from the crowd, repeating the word over and over again until it lost all meaning. Treason, treason, treason, from the adults and the children, the citizens and the guards.

Papyrus didn’t struggle as he was brought to the center of the hall, forced to his knees. He kept his gaze up, pointed off to the top corner of the hall. Like he was looking up to the angel itself. Like a martyr- a hero. No, not a hero, not all martyrs were heroes. Papyrus wouldn’t be marked as a hero, not by anyone but those who were willing to follow after the same fate. As he stared down at his brother, the tension rising, something flickered in the other’s eyelights, familiar and gone as soon as it was there.

Beasts from the surface- animals, they were called- fell into the Underground on occasion. Sans had been young, somewhere over ten, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of a ratty jacket he had shaken the dust out of a week or so back, fingers stretching and flexing within the cloth and occasionally sticking one out of a tear, stretching the hole wider, when he saw one.

It was a small kitten, fur matted and dark eyes darting around. One of its back legs was broken, twisted to the side and dragging around behind it as it mewled quietly: a plea for life to an uncaring God. 

Papyrus had seen it too, took a step forward in the direction of the animal, but Sans held him back, fisting a hand in the thin shirt he wore over even thinner bones, backing slowly out of the alley. Voices were coming from just around the corner, not yet adult but still older, and when Papyrus protested he covered his mouth and moved him to the side, hiding. The kids came into view and they saw the kitten too, nudging each other and laughing.

One stepped forward and picked it up by the scruff of its neck, its broken leg hanging limp. The meows became louder, more pleading and sorrowful. The cries had stopped soon after, the alleyway silent aside from the laughter of the children and the quiet sobbing of Papyrus.

Papyrus had pulled his face out of his jacket after a while, looking up with hollow and blank eyes, pained and afraid. It was the same flicker of an expression that passed in his eyes, still turned to the ceiling and looking out and beyond, like he could see past their prison of rock to the sky itself.

He Checked him, read his stats aloud. The jeers started again, and Sans wanted nothing more than to send the searing magic of a blaster into the crowd, reducing them to dust and ash. “Guilty of treason,” he spoke, the words coming out of a mouth that felt unlike his own. The excitement of the crowd rose up like a living thing, pulsing like the beat of a soul- just as raw and untamed. 

Movement caught his eye, deliberate and coming towards him, and he moved his gaze from where it was fixed on the spot just above Papyrus’s collarbone and turned to meet them. They held out the axe, the curved blade glinting in the light. It wasn’t particularly large, or sharp, but it was as functional as it was intimidating. It served its purpose.

He reached out slowly, hand closing around the handle of the axe, taking it from the monster. It was almost funny, if he had it in him to laugh, how the same monster brought him the weapon every time it was demanded he do this, but he didn’t know their name. Even so, he wouldn’t bother to ask, and they wouldn’t bother to tell him.

He held the weapon up.

It wasn’t heavy, not physically, almost deceivingly light, the weight balanced well and the handle worn smooth. Yet gravity seemed to try to pull it down with him, down deeper into the earth until his head was covered and he was smothered by the rock. Sans hefted it to his other hand, taking in a slow breath.

The guards on either side of his brother stepped away, but remained close enough to grab him if need be.

“By order of law,” the King spoke, voice echoing in the hall and commanding silence, “you will be executed for treason to the crown.”

Sans wanted nothing more than to swing the weapon in his hands directly at the fucker, to kick around his dust and  _ laugh _ and destroy every fucked up thing in the entire Underground until he finally came full circle back to himself. Instead he held the weapon in both hands, one of the blades inches from his face as the other pointed out to his brother. Papyrus had yet to meet his gaze.

There was a high-pitched ping of a soul being summoned forth, the tone cheery despite the weight of the hall. The crowd was always silent at this part, waiting. His grip tightened on the handle, painfully strong.

Cleaving a soul. It was a cruel means of execution, painful and drawn out, the torture stretching on for hours before they would receive the mercy of death. The soul would be kept outside the body, struck and cracked with a weapon not made of magic, and the core of their being would slowly come apart piece by piece, outside of their body and unable to mend itself. It was cruel. Sans had done it countless times before. He was cruel.

He lifted the axe. “Why?” He asked, and though his voice was quiet it carried in the hall. He was certain that every monster lining the walls heard it.

_ I can’t kill you. _

The unspoken was always more powerful than what was said. “It will not die with me.”

_ Do what you must. Continue to survive. _

He lifted the axe higher, using magic to draw the soul closer to himself. Papyrus dropped his gaze, then, meeting his eyes, and as he dropped the axe he saw the other’s sockets widen. The unspoken was more dangerous than what was said.

The tip of the blade had barely grazed his soul before Sans had gathered all of his magic, throwing it violently out to the side where he knew there was a tear, forcing it to move to their position. The action was so violent, so careless, and if they were in a better place Sans knew that Papyrus would have his ass for such an action even as he yanked so hard on the tear that he felt the fabric of space rip around them.

The feeling was off, desperately off,  _ deliberately _ off, the blank nothingness of the void consuming for longer than usual as the fabric of space was torn to shreds all around them. That was the danger to his teleports, he guessed, minimum effort causing irreparable damage. It suited him pretty damn well.

They landed on the fabric somewhere else, popping into space surrounded by cold, and Sans registered the snow at the same time he heard Papyrus let out a blood curdling cry, the axe crunching in the white and burying itself an inch in the ground as he fell over. He cursed, loudly, over and over again, running through every word he knew and making a few up for good measure, cupping his soul- there was an obvious slice where the two halves dipped to meet, spiderwebs of cracks making their way across. 

He knelt, pushing it back into Papyrus’s chest, the bleeding magic on his hand and the magic that had radiated from the soul itself causing it to burn. He couldn’t feel his hands. Couldn’t feel much of anything, actually, being given that small mercy for some damned reason even as he should have been the one writhing in the snow as every fiber of his being fought not to burst apart.

Papyrus was stubborn, always had been. He would make it.

The world around him was swimming decidedly too much, too quickly. He sank into the snow despite his struggle to not be lazy for once, magic exhausted and weak. The fabric they had landed in was different this time around.

Sans had really fucked them over this time.

**Author's Note:**

> i mean sometimes i do things and i hate that i do them, ya know? i got bored, felt like being fake edgy, so here we now stand


End file.
